Permaculture Design Course July 2010

The fab folks at Lakeside Drive Community Garden have created a wonderful opportunity for people to enjoy the beautiful dry season in the Top End while learning heaps about permaculture. Apparently, there is amazing food planned, too. Click on the flier to open it in a larger format for all the info.

Lakeside Drive moving right along

An email from Anjea Travers about the next meeting of the Lakeside Drive Community Garden -

Dear Friends of the Lakeside Drive Community Garden,

The special Monday night meeting, held on Monday 22^nd March has resulted in the beginning draft of a public spaces policy and the contacting of local community organisations about training for LDCG members; more information about this to follow in the coming weeks.

Following the Darwin City Council (DCC) ordinary meeting, we will be working with DCC on a community consultation process. This will involve members from CDU, LDCG, DCC and external consultants and will look to take place over the coming months. Discussion about this process will be had at the next meeting.

Some more news from the LDCG team…

• The Grounds and Maintenance team will be working to gather tenders for the connection of water on site and the Funding team will be ensuring the LDCG bank balance sees the process through. The Governators have been working hard on policy documents that provide the foundational support for the garden. The Events team have all sorts of fun things planned which will see the profile of LDCG (as well as some funds) raised during the dry season – look out for them and bring your friends along. The Design team are taking a well earned breather after the first draft was brought to the table. The Education team are currently planning the second series of Grow Your Own Workshops, which are tentatively booked for the May/June period.
• LDCG has also started working with CDU Design and Architecture students to provide plans for building structures for the garden and a possible website design. There’s excitement afoot and it’s great to have you all behind the project as we move forward.

The next meeting will be held on Monday 29^th March, 5:30pm for a 5:45pm start – 7:30pm at the Alawa Hall. For information about finding the Alawa Hall, please see our websitewww.cdu.edu.au/ldcg.

These are happening NOW!

An initiative of Foodcare NT,
Lakeside Drive Community Garden
& Top End Transition Towns

“Grow Your Own” Workshop series

A series of one day workshops that will provide hands-on knowledge and techniques about permaculture, organic gardening and sustainable living.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER GO TO: www.cdu.edu.au/ldcg and head for the Grow Your Own Workshops link.

About the workshops:

· Each workshop will include in-depth theory & discussions with practical demonstrations. The information presented in the workshops is totally top-end centric and climatically appropriate.

· Handouts containing detailed information and illustrations will be provided for each participant.

· The workshops will be held at gardens and houses around Darwin that show living examples of the ideas and provide sites for practical examples. In the near future, once there are facilities in place, the Lakeside Drive Community Garden will be the ideal location for ongoing workshops and trainings.

· Each workshop is separate, and participants can choose which workshop(s) they would like to attend. However the workshops also run as a series and participants can attend as many workshops as they like.

About the organisations:

Foodcare NT is a local organisation that works to promote safe, healthy and sustainable food production and consumption on a local level.

Lakeside Drive Community Garden will be a new community garden at a 2 acre site on Lakeside Drive Alawa, initially started up by a University Student Group at Charles Darwin University, but already including many different community members and groups. Its vision: Lakeside Drive Community Garden is a welcoming space where all members of the community come together to share skills, vegies and smiles. Collectively we will create a thriving, healthy centre for producing food, knowledge and inspiration based on permaculture ethics, principles and design.

Top End Transition Towns is about getting together to work out how, and actually do, a bunch of things to help us live sustainably in Darwin, Palmerston, Katherine, Rural and Remote Area’s. We are connecting local people with ideas, vision and action to move from oil dependency to sustainable communities.

Dates, topics & locations:

The workshops will be run on Saturdays during October and November.

They will run from 9.30am till 4.00pm.

Proposed topics, dates and locations:

Workshop 1 – Introduction to Permaculture: October 10th – Lachlan’s House

Workshop 2 – Introduction to Permaculture: October 17th – Xavier & Jackie’s House

(We are running 2 of these workshops as we are anticipating a lot of interest. Each is 1 day complete)

October 24th is Climate Action Day – we will be participating in this and encourage everyone else to as well.

Workshop 3 – Creating your garden: October 31st – Karen’s House

Workshop 4 – Stocking your garden: November 7th – Alawa School garden

Workshop 5 – Feeding your garden: November 14th – Xavier & Jackie’s House

Workshop 6 – Managing your garden: November 21st – Lachlan’s House

Workshop 7 – Harvesting your garden: November 28th – Alawa School garden

Workshop 8 – Sustainable home retrofitting: December 5th – Xavier & Jackie’s House

Workshop addresses will be given with the confirmation of attendance email or by phone. Scroll below to find more detailed information about each workshop.

About the facilitators:

The workshops will be run by a team of facilitators: Lachlan, Xavier, Michele, Lia, Anne, Dave, Leigh and other guests, who have wide ranging backgrounds and many years of work and experience in tropical permaculture, organic agriculture and workshop facilitation. This includes 6 years working in permaculture in East Timor and Indonesia, tropical sustainable landscape and design, plant nursery and propagation work, organic agriculture, writing permaculture books and training materials, environmental awareness work and local food production promotion. Importantly, all of the facilitators are also keen backyard practitioners, with a wealth of experience through doing it for themselves.

Workshop costs:

Each workshop is $55 for the day.

This covers training, practicals, handouts, beverages, snacks and GST.

If participants sign up for 3 or more workshops the cost is discounted to $45 per workshop.

We are endeavouring to keep the costs as low as possible, whilst still covering basic costs. Any money made over basic costs will be shared by the organizing groups to use for future projects.

Please bring:

Each participant is asked to bring a plate of food for a shared lunch. (This is always fun and tasty and helps a lot to reduce workshop costs.) Also, a good hat, sunscreen, gloves and water bottle is essential and covered shoes are required as there will be practicals in all workshops.

Attendance:

There will be a maximum of 20 participants per workshop to ensure high quality and attention – so get in quick!

· Registration forms will be available from the Lakeside Drive Community Garden website – http://www.cdu.edu.au/ldcg – follow the link to Grow Your Own workshops.

· Fill in the registration form on the website and send to growyourown@y7mail.com or ring Lachlan McKenzie on 0407 168 200. Please email unless your access to internet is limited.

· You will then receive confirmation of your placement and details of payment options for the workshop.

· Payments will be required immediately after confirmation to enable smooth organisation of workshops.

Once the maximum of 20 participants is reached for a workshop, registrations will close and a note will be added to the information page on the website. Anyone missing out will be added to a list for future workshops. There is a level of flexibility with the topics, where if registrations are very high for some topics but low in others, we may be able to double up on the more popular ones. We need a minimum number of participants per workshop to cover basic costs. If we don’t meet that number for some workshops, the people already registered will be contacted and money refunded.

Workshop topics in Detail:

Workshops 1 & 2 – Introduction to Permaculture

· What is Permaculture

· What topics does Permaculture include

·   Ethics and Principles of Permaculture, including examples to illustrate the concepts

· Patterns and Design concepts

· Field walk

· How Permaculture applies to households, streets, communities, towns, regions, nations, the planet

· 1 or 2 specific examples to illustrate

· The next step – courses, books and groups that can provide more info and support

Workshop 3 – Creating your garden

· Garden design (what, where & how) – raised beds, creative garden design, swales & terraces, water management in design, pest prevention in design, path integration, annual crop/small fruit tree areas, animal integration

· Building your garden – garden bed materials, soil composition, creating productive gardens quickly

· Planting patterns – Vegies, herbs, flowers, annual crops and fruit trees

Workshop 4 – Stocking your garden

· Seed saving – seed saving and seed storage steps, creating seed saving groups for swapping seeds and plant materials

· Nurseries and propagation techniques – creating simple nurseries, propagation mixes, protection from pests, growing plants from cuttings & root stock, marcotting

Workshop 5 – Feeding your garden

· Natural fertilizing techniques  – compost bays, compost pits, liquid composts, mulching, biodynamic techniques, effective micro-organisms, green manure crops, worm farms, legumes, humanure, local sources of materials for natural fertilizers

Workshop 6 – Managing your garden

· Pests – introduction to Integrated Pest Management, large and small pests identification, natural control techniques for pests

· Weeds – weed prevention techniques, weed removal techniques including alternatives for herbicides

· Water management – mulch, irrigation, grey water, garden design

Workshop 7 – Harvesting your garden

· Picking food

· Cooking food

· Drying food – different types of dryers and drying techniques

· Preserving food – different methods for preserving food

· Storing food – how to store food in the tropics

Workshop 8 – Around the house

· Retrofitting houses  – allowing air flow, integration with the garden, natural light, waste water treatment

· Energy efficient living tips

·   Using alternative power sources

· Compost toilets

· Waste water – Utilizing and reusing kitchen, bathroom and waste water

It’s Blitz time again!

Permaculture Blitz
Sunday the 27th of September 3pm – 6pm @
The RSPCA
Boulter Road Berrimah NT

Jobs include creating a raised bed and some fruit tree planting, citrus and passion fruit.

Please bring additional tools if you have them such as forks, mattiks, spades and hand trowels. An extra wheel barrow may also be needed for keen participants. Donations of seedlings and seeds most appreciated.

Latest News: Lakeside Drive Community Garden

Here’s a quick summary of the August 10 planning meeting:

In summary, some of the adoptions from the meeting (that were celebrated with fair-trade chocolate) included:

·       To use consensus decision making as our model for making decisions with a clause regarding pressing issues.

·       To adopt the following revised vision statement:

Lakeside Drive Community Garden is a welcoming space where all members of the community come together to share skills, vegies and smiles.

Collectively we will create a thriving, healthy centre for producing food, knowledge and inspiration based on permaculture ethics, principles and design.

·       To use the three following core ethics (based on principles of permaculture) to guide the activities of the garden

o       Earth Care

o       People Care

o       Fair Share

NEXT MEETING: Monday 24th August, at the Alawa Hall on Lakeside Drive, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Lakeside Drive Community Garden Update – August

Although the actual meeting has come and gone, this agenda will bring you up to speed on the plans. Of particular note is the vision statement…please post a comment about the discussion and adoption of it!

Lakeside Drive Community Garden is a welcoming space where all members of the community come together to share skills, vegies and smiles. Collectively we will create a thriving, healthy centre for producing food, knowledge and inspiration based on Permaculture ethics, principles and design.

Lakeside Drive Community Garden

Monday 10^th August 2009

5:30-7:30pm

Alawa Community Hall, Lakeside Drive

AGENDA

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1. 5:30 pm – Welcome (5 –10 mins)

1. 5:40pm – Icebreaker game (5 mins)

3.     5:45pm – Report backs (10 mins)

·     Grant application

·     Water

·     Media – Stateline/NT news

·     Up-to-date-ed-ness

4.     5:55pm – Consensus decision-making: to discuss and adopt (15 mins)

·     Please see information attached

1. 6:10pm – Vision Statement: to discuss and adopt (15 mins)

·     Lakeside Drive Community Garden is a welcoming space where all members of the community come together to share skills, vegies and smiles. Collectively we will create a thriving, healthy centre for producing food, knowledge and inspiration based on Permaculture ethics, principles and design.

1. 6:25pm – People, earth & fair share game (15 mins)

1. 6:40pm – Core ethics: a draft format will be presented to discuss and adopt (30 mins)
   • People care
   • Earth care
   • Fair share

1. 7:10pm – What next: brief outline of the following topics to be explored (10 mins)
   • Membership form
   • Work team formation
   • Name of garden

1. 7:20pm – Next meeting (5 mins)

update on the Darwin Community Garden Project

Here’s an update from Anjea Travers of the Charles Darwin University Talloires Student Group, coordinators of the new community garden at CDU.

A quick update on the last meeting held 20/07/09:

·       Attendance. Approximately twenty five folk attended to discuss the next stages of the gardens planning and management.

·       Discussion. A quick update on the garden was followed by discussion on what people see as the main issues, obstacles, possible working groups, decision making processes and how to progress from the visioning day.

·       Working groups. It was decided that in order for working groups to be able to get going, we had to decide on a set of shared principles and ethics by which the garden operates. It was discussed that this would need to be available for comment by all those interested in the garden – even if they were unable to attend the meeting.

·       Decision making. The process of consensus decision making was discussed and Roger facilitated a mock trial of how this may work, the group decided to trial this method of decision making and to find out more about how to participate in and facilitate this process. (The Change Agency website has information on this process.)

·       Grant application. The group agreed to apply for funding for a shade structure so that meetings/workshops can be held on site.

·       Principles and Ethics. The group agreed the principles and ethics discussion and decisions needed a two hour meeting – to be held August 10th, 5:30-7:30pm at the Alawa Hall.

·       Next meeting. It was also agreed that in order for the principles and ethics meeting to be effective and productive – a smaller working group meeting would be held prior (on July 27th) to draw some conclusions from the Visioning Day exercise and essentially plan the bigger meeting.

So that’s two new ways to be involved in this exciting project:

NEXT MEETING – Monday 27th July 5:30 – 7:00pm, for those interested in drawing themes from the Visioning Day hot potato exercise and planning the ‘Principles and Ethics’ meeting on August 10th. An agenda for this Monday night’s meeting is attached – we will discuss this agenda at the beginning of the meeting and affirm the priorities and time limits on items for discussion. Ian has agreed to facilitate the meeting and Dave will co-facilitate. Is anyone interested in being the minute taker/scribe for this meeting? We will discuss more about roles that need to be filled on the night. Thanks to Ian, Dave & Roger for assisting with this Monday night’s agenda.

FOLLOWING MEETING – Monday 10th August 5:30 – 7:30pm, for those who would like to be a part of the decision making group that sets the principles and ethics by which the garden operates. An agenda will be sent out after 27/07/09 meeting.